Strawberry-Rhubarb Tarts at King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake: Part 2 {Naptime on the Road}

By the end of the first day at the King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake I was exhausted. After madly taking notes on everything from how to make bread rise perfectly and the difference between flours, to Sara Moulton’s herbed spaetzle and how to properly debone a chicken breast, I had absorbed just about all I could. Following our elegant dinner at The Norwich Inn I turned in for the night and slept soundly until my alarm the next morning. Pizza dough was the first order of business on day two. We had begun making the dough starter the day before and set out to finish it in time for lunch. I was so glad to go through this exercise because I’ve always loved making pizza at home. I usually make it on a baking sheet in my oven and it works well, but I was eager to try the gigantor King Arthur Flour in-house wood burning pizza oven:

Between turning and kneading the pizza dough every 20 minutes we fit in on our pie crust lesson. Class concentrated on two kinds of pie crusts, pate sucree (sweet butter crust) and pate brisee (regular butter crust). I have made both of these crusts many, many times before, but anyone who has made a crust knows there is always room for improvement. In this lesson I learned the techniques for making a crust tender (pulse the ingredients in the food processor) or flakey (under work the dough with your fingertips and make sure chunks of butter are still showing). Once they were ready for chilling we returned to our pizza lunch.

Kneading Pie Crust

The pizza dough rose perfectly and we were all given chunks to shape into our personal lunch pizzas. Mine looked like an oblong circle, also known as a rectangle, which I tried to pass off as being in the shape of Vermont. Jennifer made a beautiful Colorado shaped pizza, Casey’s looked a bit like Texas. Amazingly, the instructor deemed us qualified to sling our prepared pizzas around on a massive board before inserting it into the outrageously hot oven. Thankfully, my Vermont-esque Margherita made it in and out of the oven with minimal damage and was actually edible. In fact, it was downright delicious. After inhaling said pizza I promptly walked over to the store and bought the instructor recommend pizza stone. Stayed tune for pizza posts later this summer!

Oddly Shaped Pizza Margherita

Following lunch we made dessert. Chilled pate brisees were retrieved and we were given big rolling pins with which to bang it into submission before rolling it out. The banging part was really quite cathartic, I must say. The giant circle was used for our Summer Tomato Pie. The pate sucree became the base of our strawberry rhubarb tart. In an (ill-advised?) attempt to teach us how to doll up the tarts we were instructed to make a lattice topping. Here is how mine came out:

Note to self: practice lattice work.

At the end of our crust lessons all of our baked good were set in an enormous oven roughly the size of two refrigerators and baked all at once. Man, Thanksgiving would be so much easier if I had an oven like that. Then, it was time for a photo of the group before heading out to our respective destinations. Of course, not before I made one last stop at the King Arthur Store.

King Arthur Flour Product Recommendations (these are soley my own opinions, I was not asked to write about these by King Arthur Flour in any way)

Instructions

1. For the crust: cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix well. Add the flour and stir just until the dough forms. Gather the dough into a ball and break off a ¼ of it to reserve for the lattice topping. Wrap it in plastic and set aside. Press the remaining dough into a 6-inch tart pan. Place the tart pan and the wrapped dough in the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes.

2. For the filling: Combine the berries, rhubarb, sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl and stir well.

3. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Pour the prepared fruit into the chilled crush and and roll out 6 thin strips to make the lattice. Lay three strips across in one direction, then basket weave the remaining three ropes in the other direction. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Naptime Notes

Naptime Recipe Serving ideas

This basic crust can be used for almost any tart. Have fun with summer fruit!

Naptime Stopwatch

15 minutes assembly time, 25 minutes bake time.

Naptime Reviews

Thanks to King Arthur Flour for inviting me to this sponsored event.

More Naptime Recipes

That was a gigantor oven – great word choice. And can I highly recommend the plastic flour tubs? I got mine at a local restaurant supply store and I say with no exaggeration that they changed my baking life. So much easier to measure properly.

Love your product recommendations – most are on my top 10 list, too. My favorite scale is the Escali Pana Volume/Weight scale – allows me to weigh ingredients even for recipes written in volume measurements. THAT revolutionized my baking life. So glad you were here with us!